1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to adding integrity to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) messages to protect these messages over a communication link.
2. Background of the Related Art
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (collectively referred to as AJAX) are well-known technologies that allow user interaction with Web pages to be decoupled from the Web browser's communications with a Web server. AJAX is built upon dynamic HTML (DHTML) technologies including: JavaScript, a scripting language commonly used in client-side Web applications; the Document Object Model (DOM), a standard object model for representing HTML or XML documents; and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents. In AJAX, client-side JavaScript updates the presentation of a Web page by dynamically modifying a DOM tree and a style sheet. In addition, asynchronous communication, enabled by additional technologies, allows dynamic updates of data without the need to reload the entire Web page. These additional technologies include XMLHttpRequest, an application programming interface (API) that allows client-side JavaScript to make HTTP connections to a remote server and to exchange data, and JavaScript Serialized Object Notation (JSON), a lightweight, text-based, language-independent data-interchange format.
JSON is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language, Standard ECMA-262, 3rd Edition, dated Dec. 1999. It is also described in Request for Comment (RFC) 4627. JSON syntax is a text format defined with a collection of name/value pairs and an ordered list of values. JSON is very useful for sending structured data over the wire (e.g., the Internet) that is lightweight and easy to parse. It is language-independent but uses conventions that are familiar to C-family programming conventions. Further information about JSON can be found as json.org.
Currently, JSON messages are secured over the wire using mere transport security (such as SSL), which only provides point-to-point message security. The data in the message, however, can still be compromised through malicious altering by an attacker, or accidental altering through transmission errors.
There remains a need to add message integrity to JSON messages.